It’s that time of year. As Future Perfect has in the past, we’re rounding up our most read stories of the year. This little trip down memory lane can give us a sense of the breadth and depth of Future Perfect’s coverage — and a sense of what stories and subjects you, the audience, are most excited by.
This year’s top 10 list features most of our classic subjects, like animal welfare and factory farming, represented by Marina Bolotnikova’s piece on why Thanksgiving is exactly the right day to lose the turkey and go vegan. Our love of attempting to predict the future, as evidenced by our always popular forecast for the new year. And AI safety, as shown by Sigal Samuel and Kelsey Piper’s newsbreaking exposés into OpenAI.
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But there were surprises on the list as well, like outside writers Gil Barndollar and Matthew C. Mai’s prescient warning that America’s military is running short of its most important component: soldiers. Or Dylan Matthews’s fascinating deep dive into the little known State Department intelligence bureau that has a better track record than the CIA when it comes to predicting world events.
This time of year, I’m always grateful both for our amazing staff and slate of outside contributors, and for the attention of our audience — especially those of you who subscribe to this newsletter (and the others we’ve launched this year: Marina and Kenny Torrella’s Processing Meat and Sigal’s ethical advice column Your Mileage May Vary, which comes twice a month via this feed). Here’s to a bigger and better 2025.
I’ll reveal a little secret of the journalism biz: Timing matters. We published Sigal’s takedown of airport facial screening in the middle of the summer’s record-setting air travel season, as Americans took to the skies again now that Covid was more or less in the rearview mirror. Millions of those fliers probably allowed airlines to scan their faces without thinking, but as Sigal wrote, this is something you can opt out of — and given privacy concerns, something you probably should opt out of. Keep that in mind this holiday season.
So I learned two things when this piece came out in January. One, very few of us actually need to hyperload on protein, unless you’re an active bodybuilder. In fact, as Kenny wrote, even without trying the average American is already eating significantly more protein than dietary guidelines call for, thanks to our meat-heavy diets. And two, our readers have really, really strong opinions about nutritional science. I’m not sure any other single piece this year generated so much feedback.
Here’s another journalism lesson: If you happen to have a deeply reported story about a somewhat obscure health issue — in this case, the rise of certain cancers among young people — definitely make sure you push it out when one of the most famous figures in the world becomes part of that story.